Last year Americans were less likely to be killed by a Muslim terrorist (odds of one in six million) than for
being Muslim (odds of one in one million), according to Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina.
On a Portland Train, the Battlefield of American Values -
America may seem leaderless, with nastiness and bullying ascendant,
but the best of our nation materialized during a moral crisis on a commuter train in Portland, Ore.
A white man riding on that train on Friday began screaming anti-Muslim insults
at a black 16-year-old girl and her 17-year-old Muslim friend wearing a hijab.
What the three men in Oregon understood, but the White House doesn’t, is
that in a healthy society, Islamophobia doesn’t disparage just Muslims, racism doesn’t demean blacks alone, misogyny hurts more than women, xenophobia insults more than immigrants.
We don’t know whether the murderer on the Portland train felt empowered to scream at a Muslim girl because of Trump’s own previous Islamophobic rants, any more than we can be sure
that Trump’s denunciation of reporters led a Montana candidate to body slam a journalist.
One can imagine people pretending not to hear and staring fiercely down at their
phones; instead, three brave passengers stepped forward to protect the girls.
